MY TWO DADS...

Welcome back.

I'm talking growing up with a Manosphere father and a Feminist Stepfather. 
* I tried to break that cycle.
* The Homophobia and racism. 
* The anti everything. 
* The understanding of others. 
* The openness to talk to me. 

Mike Dreyden Figueroa on Social Media

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:11

All right, welcome back. I'm talking about my two dads. But not like that. I did have two dads, yeah. Um my my father uh my father uh was in my life, you know, on and off throughout the years. Like we he was there, we got to see him, um, spent time with him as kids growing up. Um but it was never a consistent long, you know, thing every weekend kind of thing. But it would come in spurts, right? Um and then my mom and my stepdad, and then he was always around, of course. Uh, but I I started really spending a lot of time with my father uh in my teen years. Uh things were going rough at home, so I needed to, you know, I'd love to go live with my grandmother, my father's mother, and he of course was um around. And so he made I he made a conscious effort, I think. I feel like I don't know, I feel like I feel like my grandmother conversation with him. But uh she he made a conscious effort to uh spend time with me, to be honest. Um at the time he was uh remarried, he had um three stepchildren. Um I don't know what their relationship was like, um I just know what they were like when we were kids and they were everybody was around. I did not like them. And at the time my Spanish was not so good, so I always got the sense like they were talking about us, but I didn't know what they were saying. Um It was very odd. But I knew that um I used to I used to this is where my my uh misogyny came in, I suppose, on that on that front. When I was a little boy, um whenever I would spend the weekend with my father, they would all of course all be around. And I knew that I was his son, and they were those two other boys were not his sons, so I got away with and said whatever I wanted. Um and she there's nothing that he could really do about it. And I know that she did uh his was she my stepmother? I really didn't think about that. Yeah, no. Uh I really did act a fool and I really was a dick. Um maybe that's why I wasn't going over there as much as and I just didn't like her really. I just I just I just felt like I wanted to be there. We're supposed to be spending time I felt with my father. I mean, we're spending, I had all these expectations in my head, and then all of a sudden all these people are around. I'm like, who are these people? Why are they here? That's not what I thought we were gonna do. Nobody's talking to me. And I, you know, felt slighted. Why are they so bad? I'm not bad. I'm just pissed off right now and I don't know how to act, so I'm just gonna be stupid. That was it. Anyway, so in my teen years I tried to break this cycle of um the disconnect that my father and grandfather had and that I had with my father. And you know, talking with my grandfather before he died, he talked to me a lot about how he wanted to I'm gonna go off. He wanted to have a relationship with my dad, but my father was just an asshole all the time. Which he was, he was a fucking asshole all the time. If he wasn't saying the n-word this, the n-word that, and mind you, my father's you know, Afro-Latino mixed himself, but mostly looking black, um it was how he felt that's how his vernacular was, and it was horrible because me growing up a mixed-race kid with my white family, you know, looking, you know, Italian and and and you know, swarthy, you know, I fit into a whole other world that he just honestly didn't understand and was constantly bumping up against, right? So my grandfather would say, you know, he just doesn't just doesn't get it, you know, and I tried really hard to you know read the firmness. But he had a singular point of view, um green goes this, green goes that, and we're this, and we're that. Um he was a proud Puerto Rican, but he just really didn't understand part of your Puerto Rican mist is very mixed because you've got Daino in you, you've got European in you, you know, your mix is me. And yo bro, you knocked up a white girl. What were you thinking? And I know what he was thinking. He was thinking, I'ma get me some ass right now. And my mom, I know her too. She was like, I'm gonna get me some dick right now. And here I am. I was not almost here. Um, that's a whole other story. Uh but yeah, I tried to break the cycle with him and tried to get to know him. And when I was living with my my grandmother, you know, I knew that okay, my father was an advid martial artist. You know, he also talked a big game, but he backed his shit up. Nobody fucked with my father. Um and I wanted that too. I wanted that spiral because when he walked the neighborhood, everybody was like, yo, Bosco, yo, Bosco. And I'm like, oh shit, father's fans. I started feeling a little proud. Um so yeah, I said, well, you know, let me try the martial arts things with him, maybe I can connect with him, and it just became constant, you know. I don't know what the word to use, uh misogyny, you know, say uh and and and um what's the other word? Um wanna say manosphere. I don't know what word to use there, but it it became that, you know, it was derogatory. There it is. And I was uh getting exhausted because I started realizing I'm a lot smarter than my father. And I have a larger vocabulary than my father. Um and I don't I don't speak street, I don't speak anybonics, and I have I have an accent as far as saying I prefer instead of saying I want, you know, if that makes sense. So I tried to connect with the guy, but it was always those things, and I started maybe let me try to adopt these mannerisms. Um and it was it was just not working. I just it felt like I was wearing the skin that was not m me. Um as I think about it now, if I was you know studying theater back then as a kid, I really would have found it difficult to try to embody this, you know, street kid. Although I could I could have I I realized the value in it now. Um But the constant homophobia and the constant uh racism uh was exhausting because he would say things like I knew who I was sitting in front of him at the dinner table, and he would constantly say, you know, homo is this, baggage that, and you know, see the we'd be watching the news and something come on, and then he'd just go off on a tangent. And I just look at my sister sometimes if she was there and my grandmother and our eyes are just all doing this, like I was like half thinking, because I know my mother would not have tolerated any of that conversation, and uh my grand, I would look at my grandmother like, are you gonna say something here? I think it's been the machismo of the Latino male was just accepted, right? And it and it felt it made me feel as much as I would start feeling bigger and bigger and more like yeah, my father's son, I started getting deflated and feeling smaller and smaller and smaller because it was that one part of me that I knew that if he knew for sure, for sure, he would have reached across that table, grabbed me by the neck, and tried to end my life. That's the man who was. He even was told me once he was so proud of how he went gay bashing when he was a teenager. I'm like, wow, that's what I realized I could never tell this man who I really am. I had to really hide. So I would start, God, sometimes I would say say shit that I really didn't mean or feel, just to deflect. And my girlfriend in high school, I really gonna be great. Um, and I'm not sure if this is in part of the manosphere world and how I how to view things, but how I conducted myself in this world, um, having a father who was very much like this, I would time him coming home from work to catch me and my girlfriend doing it. And it would be, you know, like the bedroom, my bedroom doors open, and you know, I would hear the lock and the the key and the lock, and all of a sudden I'd start ramping up the noises, and you know, I know that him passing by real quick, because you know, I would time it and then afterwards just play it off like nothing happened, and then later on he'd be like, listen, you gotta go wash your face. I can s I can I can smell that. Um things like that just to throw him off the scent. Was that acting? Was that was that um I don't know what that was. Not to say that I didn't enjoy it because I love my girlfriend. I would really enjoy being with her, but I would definitely use that to my advantage to throw off any scent that you might think that my son's a homo. Um is that misogynistic? Is that is that I don't know. He was just anti everything. Completely. And it hurt because you know, I I really wanted to be like a lot of my friends who had their fathers in their lives or can hang out with their dad and chill out or whatever, and like even even as I got older and I'm like more confident in my skin, but I basically said to him he would drop you know some kind of comment. I'm like, just so it's clear, you know, I'm 40-something now. You need to understand who I am. I'm bisexual. I've had boyfriends, I've had girlfriends. You need to understand that and get that in there. That doesn't change. I'm still the same person. I'm not a drag queen, I'm not trans. I'm a dude who likes dudes and like girls. And I think the girl liked his face. Because I he and I did it in front of people because I didn't want to like really have an argument with him. I don't think we would have had an argument, I think he would just shut down and not know. Like he the color just came from his face. And I had to say it in a bunch in front of a bunch of other people so that he would understand my son's a grown man, he knows who he is. And I felt better too once I said that to him. For sure. Um, I think one of the this one memory just came to mind. I think I turned 18, and you know, of course I was smoking cigarettes at the time, and you know, he knew I had cigarettes and things like that. You can light up in front of me now, light a cigarette. I'm like, I don't want a cigarette. He's like, just light a cigarette. He wanted me to feel free to do what I wanted as an 18-year-old. Of course, as an 18-year-old, I'm stupid, I didn't know anything yet, so I light a fucking cigarette. Now, on the flip side of that coin, um, my stepfather was far more engaging as far as and I tested the waters, you know, just to see where he was, because I knew how my father would act. How he would respond to me. So I would ask him like off the cover questions about, you know, sex or drugs or you know, like what is heroin? Like, oh, heroin, blah blah blah blah. I know if I asked my father what's heroin, he's like, who told you about heroin? Well, do you doing heroin? But um my stepfather was like, oh well it's this, it's this, and it's that it's really not good, you don't want that. Like, oh, okay. So I'm sorry. I think my cat's fucking hair ball. Anyway. Yeah, she's definitely going up right now. Uh so he yeah, and when it came to sex too, I would ask him all kinds of questions and he explained to me. Whereas with my father talking to him about sex, it would be like um getting in there, dominating her, doing it, you know, good all of that. My stepfather on the other hand was like, well, if you do this, she'll feel this, and she'll you'll make her feel that. And she'll it was all about pleasing a woman as opposed to just doing her. And I found those two conversations really interesting where I can, when I was with my girlfriend, you know, start off very, you know, to use there, uh, very uh romantic, you know, and get her really tuned up and then just let her have it and then slow down again. And I started playing with these different things. I'm like, oh, this works on for both guys and girls. I think that that was I think the most educational sexual edge I got from my stepfather and my father, because I learned a lot from that. Um and I think the openness that he he made me feel that I could talk to him about any subject. It was actual conversation, um, and nothing was off limits. But I did I did feel a lot of times having to hide from my family on both sides, having to truly hide who I am or was back then growing up, discovering myself for fear of um uh retribution maybe well not retribution, or or um abandonment. Is that the right word to use? I'm not quite sure. I don't feel like this is you know part of the whole manosphere thing, but I think it's like having the the effect of these kinds of people on me growing up as just an inquisitive kid who's you know queer little kid who didn't know who he was, just being his natural self and then having to deal with the the misogyny and uh anti-gayness in general, and then mostly from then from you know family and how that affected me. So I I know being on the the receiving end and what all of that meant for me and it's and I there was a time, I think, where I stopped worrying about it and didn't give a shit anymore. I was just because I think what happened was I had to offend for myself. I was out on my own, I was paying my own rent, buying my own groceries, you know, paying my own bills, trying to find work, stay from being homeless. All of that stuff sets your focus where you're like that shit does not matter anymore. And then when you're dealing with it in the real world, you know, you you become more adept at either navigating past it, through it, under it, or taking answering it head on. And that I guess that's what growing up really is all about, isn't it? Um so yeah, I would say that you know the trauma and I don't want to say trauma, I want to say that the difficulty of having a racist, misogynistic uh father and a feminist uh stepfather taught me a lot about who I am and how I carry myself, you know. My mom's my mom's, you know, know because I said so, where are you, who are they, what's going on, 20 questions kind of thing, kept me safe for sure. You know, kept me from many paths that I did not take because I'm like, if she finds out I'm a dead man. Um she, you know, she did what she could because she was again back then, a side note, you know, teenager having kids, back then it was easy for them to take us, take kids from there. She fought hard to keep them. Um so being strict with us in that aspect was a benefit. Um the downside to that was instead of helping me understand things, it became a an inquisition or a uh interrogation, which sort of clamped me up. Uh but because of her putting the the the seed of rational thought and um uh what's the term, um critical thinking, I really did look at everything from different points of view, like if I do this, what's the ramification of that? What is the consequence of that? Um so with that said, you know, talking with both my stepfather and my father and and everything that they taught me and showed me and and uh exposed me to left me a little bit more rounded for sure. Um I had tools to navigate the world with and able to acknowledge when I'm being misogynistic and how to not stop doing that and really understanding my thoughts and why I'm thinking these things, like when I see certain things or hear certain things or around certain people. The man's fear is dangerous for sure, I think. Um if the world was like that it would continue, we would continue to have wars and conflict, and you know, anyone who is not like that would be up against it in a conflict constantly. Um and I think that changing the world maybe to allow people to strive and succeed would change a lot of that behavior because if there was no reason why you could not do what you wanted to do or pursue what you wanted to do without you know having to overwhelm someone or dominate someone or destroy your opponent, um I think the what would be far better doing. So yeah. I don't know I don't know if that if that's again I think let me just not take away from myself here. Having these experiences help round round moulding and understanding who these people are helps me to understand why they're not. Thanks for being here. Have a good one.